Freaking Americans
by AniraAi
Summary: Being an exhange student is hard, especially when you don't even know the local language. An American is tresspassing on Karakura territory, and more than one of the students is feeling a bit defensive of thier turf. Bleach fanfic... yummmm. OFC included.
1. Foreword: INFO

**Tittle: Freaking Americans**

**Author: Anira**

**Summary:  
**Being an exhange student is hard, especially when you don't even know the local language. An American is tresspassing on Karakura territory, and more than one of the students is feeling abit defensive of thier turf. Not to mention how... just ODD she is.

Inspiration:  
Agh, a lot of things; the Chinese exchange student at my school, sudden pariahety from my friends, ect...

_**Rated T for Teen** (watch out for foul language... sorry, I do love my profanity :3)_

_**Preview;**_

"What are you doing here…?" Ichigo's voice faded away as the sound of labored breathing reached the ears of the Shinigami and the students.

In the back of the room, the American exchange student, Deidra, was struggling to control herself.

'_Hyperventilation,'_ she struggled to think as she pressed the tips of her fingers into her temple and spread her legs out to get a good stance on the floor, even though she was seated. _'I don't have asthma… It must be a panic attack. But why…?'_

Her reasoning was not working on her body's unjustifiable reaction to... whatever in was reacting to. It felt like a particularly large person was standing on her lungs, cutting off her air.

"_I can't breath," _she struggled to say in breathless English as she clutched at her throat with the hand that was not pressed to her forehead. Her vision was beginning to blur as she slipped out of her seat and onto all fours on the floor.

"_I… can't… BREATH!"_

_**End Preview**_

Language Indicators (you might need them)

_Italics_- English

'in single quotes'-thoughts

"in double quotes"- spoken Japanese

"_italicized double quote"_- spoken English

Description

I hate doing these little profile things. They seem so impersonal, but just so you know;

**Name:** Deidra

**Hair Color:** Brown

**Eyes:** Hazel (she's vehement about them being called HAZEL not BROWN since its her only good trait)

**Occupation:** Sophomore student at Karakura high school, newly transferred from Montana, USA

**Special Skill:** Er.. she's just a normal person. She doesn't have one -__-

Everything else about her will be explained… later?

**TWO QUICK THINGS**

1. Her name is pronounced DIA-DRAH. And I SWEAR TO GOD that I didn't mean to name her after Deidara from Naruto. See, it was time that I used a name that starts with D, since I hadn't yet, and I was thinking "Diane, no. Dean, no that's a boys name. Daffy, nu-uh. Uh… DEIDRA!" I thought a was a genius until I googled it half way through this and saw that it was the name of a Naruto character. XP "Oh…" I thought. "Well at least their names are spelled and pronounced differently!" because I already had it in my head that her name would sound like it does. Promise I'm not that unoriginal. ;)

2. I REFUSE to put "soandso's POV" above everything because to me that looks incredibly unprofessional (I'm writing fanfics and I want to look professional -_-) , so just PAY ATTENTION and odds are you'll get it. If you don't get it, then maybe you aren't supposed to. It's confusing…

I talk too much, I know. I'll keep it to a minimunm from now on. If anyone even got through all that.... HERE WE GO, CHAPTER ONE!!! (click the arrow... do it.... click... *point point*)


	2. 1:Deidra Rhodes:1

**Freaking Americans  
_Deidra Rhodes  
Chapter 1_**

_

* * *

_

Where to start?

Deidra wrote down in English.

She looked up at the teacher, who was preaching at them in Japanese with a book in her hand. Deidra could understand about… every other word or so. She figured she'd just plead incomprehension and see where that got her.

Probably with a tutor or a translator.

That's embarrassing.

What kind of ambassador for America was she being? Playing such incompetence? Her test scores where what had persuaded them to let her in to the school three quarters through Sophomore year. Wasn't she supposed to be better than this?

No, that's the answer. This was somewhat normal to how she was at home; she took notes, that was all the teachers could ask of her. She paid attention, when it suited her, and she got an average of Cs and Bs, and As in easy things, like language and art. Language is only on that list because, at her school, she had taken Chinese, and the teacher had been so humble, as Chinese manners demanded, that she gave all nine of the students in her class an A, no matter how much effort they put forth. And art was just… well, people got by in art pretty easily. Her school had been for the talented, and, once again, the thing that got her in was her test scores.

Neither she nor her mother understood how her test scores were as high as they were (97% in Comprehension was the highest) when she herself was so lazy.

But no matter. The schools did not question it, so that was fine, and she had only been accused of cheating in first grade, unjustly at that.

If she listened to the teacher VERY HARD she could comprehend what she was saying, but it was rough, and she was already in the middle of the third sentence after when Deidra caught up, so what was the point?

_I don't want to explain who I am, _Deidra wrote, glancing at the boy to her side to make sure he wasn't peaking at her writing; she felt pathetic for writing in English, but who cares anyway? Obviously not the kid next to her. _Just know; my name is Deidra, I am 15, brown hair, hazel eyes, and I am an American exchange student in Japan._

She lifted the end pencil to her mouth and bit down, feeling her teeth sink slightly into the eraser. She couldn't help it. She had to write some lyrics.

_When we break the Dawn._

She pulled her head back to stretch her neck. She had been uncomfortably bent over her notebook for far too long.

Examining the lyrics, she frowned, and then leveled a glance at the teacher so she would think she was paying attention. The song wasn't among her usual tastes, but she had heard it over the summer and found the techno tones to be to her liking.

Which reminded her…

As she began to list her favorite albums, she didn't notice the kid next to her glancing at her notebook, and slowly, ever so slowly, raising his hand at what he saw…

"Takashi?" the teacher called in a shrill voice over the students.

Deidra poked her head up, looked at the teacher, then looked at the kid next to her, Takashi.

He pointed to her notebook discretely.

Deidra's eyes narrowed and she blew a small breath out of her nose. The boy was a straight up tattle tale, which was probably why she had been seated next to him.

"Deidra-san," the teacher sighed, making Deidra cringe. "I want to see you during lunch."

Back in America, the room would have rippled with "oo"s or something similar. Not here. Here everyone stared at her with pity or scorn, and one or two people scowled at Takashi. Deidra sank in her seat.

* * *

A/N: Make sure you note that she's American, so her last name is LAST in the Title. ;)


	3. 2:Uyruu Ishida:2

**Freaking Americans  
_Uryuu Ishida  
Chapter 2_**

Uryuu couldn't help but roll his eyes.

This happened EVERYDAY, could you blame him?

He couldn't decide whether to be upset with Deidra, who insisted in writing in English after her parents had instructed the school to punish her if she did just this, or with Takashi, who hade no sympathy for the poor girl.

The only reason he knew these things was because he had been assigned to show her around the first day.

Why exactly they had chosen such an awkward person to welcome a girl who barely knew the local dialect was odd enough. Maybe because they were each smart, or at least, Deidra was supposed to be. He had seen a copy of her test scores, which were commendable to say the least, but he had also seen her school grades, which were not so commendable. She had barely passed some things, with grades ranging from low Cs to plain As, and dotted with frequent Bs.

Now she was just barely pulling a C average in everything, which could be expected from a normal student with average grades and test scores, but he had expected more from someone like her, and obviously so had the school; she had failed both of them.

Although, it didn't seem like it was all her fault, exactly.

The first few days, she had tried, really tried, but when her efforts came up short, partially thanks to the language barrier, she had simply given up. On everything.

Those first weeks, he had seen a fierce determination to prove herself, and he had respected that, but it had faded and all but disappeared after the third week, at which point she had stopped all contact with everyone, including him. Besides emails, which she was obliged to, so she could further her language skills.

He had watched as she struggled with her life, trying to communicate with the people who kindly chose to talk to her. But she had been beaten down by those who hated outsiders, or Americans, or were just… scornful? He didn't know the reasons why they had shown such dislike towards her, but they had and it had beaten her back. He had known her thoughts on this;

_"I won't let them hurt me. I've dealt with such people before and failed. I won't fail this time."_

He had been the one who was charged with translating the bits of English she got down in the blasted notebook of her's before the page was ripped from the metal binding, right out from under her fingertips.

There was a sigh and a slam of a book at the front of the classroom. "DEIDRA-SAN!!!"

Half of the class scooted back an inch; she hardly ever yelled.

"Give that notebook to Ishida and I want to see you AND him during lunch."

Ishida sighed and glanced back at her; she had her hair covering one side of her face, as usual, and the other eye partially covered, but not enough to hide the way that one brown eye had glossed over with tears. She stumbled out of her desk, and slid her notebook off the table, making her way quickly down the aisle towards him. She dropped it in her haste, and she turned back around and dropped to a crouch to pick it up; he saw her shoulders shake slightly before she rose and squared them. By now there would be a tear running from her eye.

She didn't look at his face when she got to his seat. She took a couple of to-quick breaths, a ritual she always preformed in the presence of people in general, and dropped the notebook on the hand he had been taking notes with, and zipped back to her table as fast as possible.

He refused to turn around and watch what happened next as he slipped the notebook on top of his books that were stacked on the metal grate under his seat. Sighing, he picked his pencil back up and continued scrawling in neat Japanese, soon forgetting the gently crying girl in the back of the room.

* * *


	4. 3:Orihime Inoue:3

**Freaking Americans  
_Orihime Inoue  
Chapter 3_**

* * *

To say the least, Orihime felt sorry for the poor girl.

'Sobbing in the back of the room like that,' she shook her head at her notes. 'Poor thing.'

Orihime had been one of the people kind enough to try to strike up a conversation with the American, Deidra. It hadn't been that successful. She had stuttered in broken Japanese and the so-called "conversation" had deteriorated to Orihime speaking very simple sentences slowly and loudly while Deidra winced and said "hai" to almost everything.

She had ended the conversation with the impression that, even if they had had the conversation in fluent English, Deidra still would have been highly awkward. She obviously wasn't a very social person at all.

* * *

A/N: So short.... I have difficulty writing in Orihime's point of view. -_-


	5. 4:Sado Yatsutora:4

**Freaking Americans  
_Sado Yatsutora  
Chapter 4_**

* * *

Chad was a very quiet person, and no one could argue that he wasn't intimidating in his bulk. But that girl in the back… the American. Silence didn't suit her in his opinion. Every time he looked at her, she seemed like she was about to burst with things to say, because of the way her lips were always pressed together. It was his best guess, that her constant slip-ups writing English and such was her way of getting all that out, since she probably couldn't express it all in very good Japanese, and odds were, no one would listen.

He was used to listening, but that girl made everyone feel awkward, even him. Something about her was just odd, and he couldn't place his finger on it.

They lived in generally the same direction from school, aside from one vital turn that separated their streets quite distinctly. . So, the first day she had walked home, he had seen her leave. Curious, he had decided to go on and head home, basically trailing her quietly from behind. He had watched as she pulled a small rectangle contraption from her black messenger bag that had a red insignia on it, which he recognized from a manga that he wasn't particularly familiar with, and plugged two little ear buds into her ears. Then she continued walking, head down and hands in her school jacket.

About two or three blocks away from his turn, she had pulled the buds from her ears and kneeled down on the pathway, clutching her stomach. Alarmed, Chad had rushed to her aide, but when she heard him running, she turned around, panicked and sped down an ally and into the street beyond. He stood staring down the ally, contemplating running after her. But her eventually decided against it, considering it was him who made her run in the first place, and headed home.

When she hadn't shown up at school for the next three days, he started to feel guilty and a little bit afraid she had gone missing or something. Wouldn't he have heard something on the news about a missing American then? He hadn't, but patiently waited for her to return, if only to ease his guilt.

After the third day, she had shown up around lunch, walking quickly to the teacher's desk, handing her a note, and hastening to her seat in the back. After letting out a small sigh of relief, he had more or less put the American out of his mind completely since then.

* * *

A/N: I love Sado so much!!! Even though I think I failed to capture his... er... Sado-ness....


	6. 5:Tatsuki Arasawa:5

**Freaking Americans  
_Tatsuki Arisawa  
Chapter 5_**

* * *

Tatsuki pursed her lips, arms crossed over her chest as she watched the teacher roam back and forth across the front of the classroom, barely listening to her idle chatter. She moved her pointer finger across the blank notebook page where she was SUPPOSED to be taking notes.

'I don't get it…' she thought.

When Tatsuki had first laid eyes on the American, it had been at her dojo. Her mother, a small, bony woman, with pale skin that hung off her body in an odd and sickly way, had walked in with her one day, and proceeded to the desk to speak with her Sensei, most likely about lessons. Deidra, as she had later learned was her name, was wearing a pair of light jeans that hugged her thighs and straightened out like stove pipes after her knee joints, a gray fleece with a blue symbol she couldn't read on the right upper corner, and a plain white T-shirt underneath. She also wore a long necklace that hung just low enough that it almost touched the zipper, which only went a quarter of the way down the garment, of her fleece, and a chocker that had something green and something black as a charm. She also had earphones in her ears, and was mostly glued to a small rectangle, and I-pod, which she held in her palm. She hadn't been sparring at that moment, sitting out between rounds in the mini in class tournament they were having, so she was free to watch the two currently sparring. But the appearance of an American had distracted her.

Tatsuki scowled. She didn't like distractions.

Eventually, Sensei had gestured to the back, toward his office. That's when Deidra had started protesting.

She could tell by her tone that she was upset.

She tugged at her mother's sleeve, still speaking in rapid English, and kept glancing nervously at the door, to the blue-carpeted area on which Tatsuki and her fellow students were sparring. Her mother shook her off, until it got to a point that a vein began to bulge in her tendon-accentuated neck, and she had grabbed Deidra's wrist and spoke at her in loud, obnoxious tones. Deidra's face began to tighten and tense until she yelled back at her mother.

The woman's face fell at her words, and Deidra, to the shock of everyone in the room, since the yelling had caused everyone to stop and stare at the two, struck her mother in the back of the neck, knocking her out.

As her mother fell to the ground, Deidra had looked just as shocked as the rest of them, of not more. She had looked around in a panic, and then ran out of the door and down the street. Sensei had begun to bend down next to the unconscious body of Deidra's mother, when Tatsuki's teacher and two students had sprinted up to him, bowed, and asked for permission to pursue Deidra. Sensei nodded and sighed as the group raced out the door and down the street in the direction Deidra had gone. They came back empty handed a half an hour later, by which time Sensei, with the help of a couple other students, had extracted the woman's cell phone from her purse and contacted her husband after much difficulty. He was on his way to pick her up, because it was assumed after taking such a hit to a vital nerve she would not regain consciousness for awhile yet.

It was all very odd, in Tatsuki's eyes, and, upon arriving at home, she had described the events to Orihime. She had, however, not told her that the mysterious girl who knocked out her own mother was Deidra; she could be mean, but not mean enough to soil the reputation of a new girl, much less an unwitting American.

Much to her distaste, the only reason for the situation she could come up with was that Deidra had taken some form of karate in the States and her mother had wanted her to continue the lessons in Japan. But Deidra's possible reasons for protesting to this was a bit harder to arrive at; she could have 1) hated the sport and not wished to continue it, or 2) been intimidated by the prospect or the students. One was not so plausible, since she had stuck her own mother down with such skill. And Tatsuki was observant; she had watched Deidra's movements for that undercurrent of grace and control with which people who were truly committed to the sport would move, and it was there, but only barely. Two was obviously the answer. Deidra was very shy, which had become apparent in all the conversations in which she had failed to be an active participant, despite the best effort of the student who tried to speak with her. But she was obviously not that committed, since her shyness kept her from continuing the practice.

That left one thing to be determined; at what level had she quit?

Black belt? Tatsuki doubted it. Probably lower. Somewhere around brown belt; this was just below black in her style of karate.

The whole situation made her unhappy, though; she didn't like the idea of HER sport being abused by the dumbass Americans, as it most likely was.

Scowling again, Tatsuki stood her finger up on the blank piece of paper so that only the first joint was bent at an angle to the desk.

'Americans,' she thought. 'They're just surrounded by trouble.'

* * *

A/N: BEFORE YOU ASUME ANYTHING, Tatsuki is NOT RACIST TO AMERICANS!!! I mean, honeslty, I kind of hate us Americans too. We can be pretty stupid, if you think about it. And we are just SOAKED in trouble... hehe. I hope no one flames me for this....

Just Ichigo left!!! And then the REAL story begins! Even though I have NO CLUE where I'm going with all this!!! YAY CLUELESSNESS!!!! *cyper confettii time*


	7. 6:Ichigo Kurosaki:6

**Freaking Americans  
**_**Kurosaki Ichigo  
Chapter 6**_

* * *

Ichigo shuffled his long legs uncomfortably under the desk. Someone of his proportions should not be made to sit in such an awkward seat. His knees brushed the underside of the desk, for crying out loud!

Glancing back at his friend, Chad, he saw he was no better off, being as bulky as he was. But Chad never complained.

Ichigo, however, did NOT like these accommodations; they made him twitchy.

He let his mind wander as he stretched out his feet, simultaneously cursing the lunch bell for not ringing yet. Eventually, and arguably, inevitably, his thoughts drifted to the American.

He let out a rough sigh, and glanced a the window, remembering his own odd run in with her;

It was he had paid his little visit to Soul Society, a little while after Christmas break, about a month after Deidra had arrived in Japan.

Just like any other night, he was racing to battle a hollow on the South side of Karakura, somewhere in the general vicinity of Chad's house and Urahara's shop, which were only miles apart.

But when he had arrived, he had been horrified to find a familiar face in the clutches of the hollow. This particular one had the body of a human, only larger, with claw like arms and oversized legs, like a goats or horses. The mask had horns, which curled back in spirals on either side of its large head, and had two oversized front teeth. That mask would have been funny, if not for the fact that it's massive two-fingered hands weren't holding down a pain-stricken Deidra.

He got rid of this one about as quickly as the others, unfortunately, though, this one had been smart and had used Deidra as a human shield as one point. Ichigo hadn't meant to, but he ended up leaving a long gash down one of her shoulders. Which left him with two choices; take her to his father's clinic, or to Urahara.

Not wanting to explain the huge, bleeding sword wound on a girl her barely knew, and not wanting to deal with his father in general, he delivered her to Urahara, who healed her and successfully kept her knocked out for the two days his special healing methods took.

What a nightmare that had been.

"We're going to have to keep her unconscious," Yoruichi, who had still been hanging around Urahara's place, said. She had thought it better if she heal Deidra, because she insisted that any girl would prefer a fellow woman, then an old perverted man in sandals. No one could really argue with that infallible logic, obviously.

"Wh-?" Ichigo started to ask before she cut him off.

"She's just a normal kid," She said, taking a bottle of sake from a nearby platter. "I cant sense any thing but normal Spiritual Energy from her. There's no reason she has to get involved in this, and there's no reason we should let her in on the secret." She eyed Ichigo with a bit of distaste. "You just HAD to cut her…"

"I DIDN'T MEAN TO!!!" he yelled.

At that point, Deidra had taken a deep breath in through her nose and her eye lids fluttered.

Before Ichigo could think, Yoruichi smashed the bottle of Sake over Deidra's head, sufficiently knocking her unconscious once more.

"WHAT THE HELL?!!?" he yelled at Yoruichi, who just stared down at her "patient" with skepticism.

"I won't be able to keep doing that without her suffering considerable head damages…"

"THAT'S FOR SURE!!!"

It had been determined that she hadn't been able to see either the hollow or Ichigo, and Urahara had been sure to take care of any lingering memory of hers. So when she returned to school three days later, Ichigo had said nothing to her, but watched her very carefully, looking for any signs that she remembered even a shred of that night's happenings. Any misplaced glances in his direction and he would have to talk to Urahara immediately.

But there were none. She acted just as she normally did; getting in trouble for writing in English, and being more or less quiet and keeping to herself.

Just to be sure, he trailed her home as a Shinigami, and discovered why she had ended up so close to Urahara and Chad's place; she lived not so far from either of them, almost right in between them, respectively.

And so he'd reported to Urahara for the last time about the odd little American, and the subject was permanently dropped from then on.

But… ever since then… Ichigo had felt awkward around Deidra. Not that it showed that much. He was, as a rule, a stony faced person. Frowning all the time was pretty much a part of his character. He was also not known for broadening his social horizons. So no one thought anything of it when he completely avoided speaking to the American.

Still, he HAD saved her from a hollow, AND almost taken her life in the process. Somehow he felt like he owed her something.

Also, the fact that Yoruichi said she sensed nothing special about the American didn't settle well with him. To attract a hollow, didn't you have to have some flair of spiritual energy? Or maybe that was a dead relative of hers, or an old friend who had died with some grudge on her, or debt they hadn't paid to her. Only then, he would have noticed a spirit following her to school… wouldn't he?

Honestly, it just didn't add up.

But he didn't want to think about it, not one bit, and the lunch bell gave him the perfect excuse not to.

If only it would ring…

* * *

A/N: YAY!!! Story time!!!! I know vaguely what the first REAL chapter is going to look like. Yeah, that was pretty much ALL back ground... heehee *twitch*

I'd really apreciate reviews. But no flames on my slight suggestions of Japanese racism please... ;.; I'd really apreciate no flames... they hurt me little heart 3


	8. 7:Urahara Kisuke Encounter:7

**Freaking Americans  
_Urahara Kisuke Encounter  
The First Legit Chapter_**

* * *

Deidra stepped tentatively into the little shop, almost jumping when the bell rang, announcing her presence. She froze instinctively, waiting for someone to come and greet her, or yell at her to get out, but when no one came, she continued in, shutting the door softly behind her.

She turned her head left, and right, searching for anyone. No one.

Making her way up to the counter, where a display sat, the only recognizable thing to her being a pez dispenser type-contraption with a duck head on top, she leaned over it, poking her head to the other side to see if anyone was hiding there.

Suddenly she froze.

_"What am I doing?"_ she said to herself in English, straightening up from her leaning over the counter and hitting her palm to her forehead. _"Stupid, I came here for a reason. I came here to…" _And she froze again.

She hadn't come here for a reason, actually. She had been bored sitting around her house where no one was ever home on such glorious sunny evenings as this, thinking of how, back home in her kid-friendly little neighborhood she knew like the back of her palm, she would have gone "exploring" the many little side streets along the main road she had walked to school every day. She'd always had a fine sense of direction, supposedly passed down from her mother. Her father liked to think he possessed this skill as well, though he most obviously did not considering her could never remember which entrance they used at Target, much less navigate a maze of streets.. Deciding to hone her skills, she had taken a chance and slipped on some jeans, a Y-MCA T-shirt, and slung a jacket around her waist, just in case she needed it. Then she had grabbed her I-pod, deciding on the blue buds she used for school among the cacophony of other earphone options (For Example: the generic white ones that come with an I-pod, Bose earphones in bud form, both of which she found pretty cruddy, the bulky head-band ones she used for airplanes and listening in her room when she didn't want anyone to head, ect) and jumped out the door.

Somehow, she had ended up here.

WITHOUT any money.

Sigh.

She roamed the shelves forlornly, running her finger as delicately as possible over the dusty items. The shop would have been slightly creepy, if it had not been so filled with light and a mysterious aura of comfort she found rather enticing. Enjoying the feeling of the sun on the back of her neck streaming in through an odd collection of windows on the walls, she checked the entirety of odd objects on the shelves, not recognizing half of them, even though they had tags identifying them. Some she didn't want to touch, like a messy bit of goop that was situated proudly in a box in the middle area of the fourth shelf, and others she wanted to pick up and run her fingers over, like the silken pouch full of who knows what near the front of the second shelf in a row of five. Some of the things fascinated her, like the glistening throwing knives at the back, yet she decided against touching because they also emitted a sense of "no touch" ness.

There was something else that emanated a sense of "no touch" ness. More so than the knifes. It was a great black cat, sitting on the last shelf, starring at her with scrutinizing gold eyes. She narrowed her eyes at it in return, wondering if it was real or not. She got the urge to poke it, but deigned from doing so, considering if it was real, it might hurt her for such an insulting prod.

She stood, trying to decide if it was real or not, and considering no part of it moved at all, not event he small chest to signify the intake of breath, and how utterly REAL it looked, this was a very hard decision.

Eventually she turned away and scanned the shop again with her eyes.

Then she muttered to herself, _"So odd, yet… It all feels… very familiar."_

"YORUICHI!!!" came the yell, splitting the silent air in the room all but in half, and making Deidra jump so high it was all she could do to stop from screaming.

With another start, she heard a thump behind her, and turned just in time to see the cat was gone and to feel something silky run between her legs before the black cat shot across the room…

To the feet of a man wearing a beach hat.

At least, she thought that's what that was.

_'What an odd sense of style…'_ she thought, pulling the earphone that had remained in her right ear out, just to be polite.

The man smiled, though she couldn't tell if the gesture reached his eyes because of the low level at which he wore the green striped beach hat, and that made her a bit uncomfortable. When she sparred kids back in America, she had found that their eyes show quite clearly their intentions. She had also discovered this to be true in normal situations. Not being able to see this man's eyes made the itch at the base of her spine, the one she had felt this morning before going for a walk that told her she needed to got out and DO something, returned with ferocity.

"_Ah…hello_," the man said in a friendly manner. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you come in. You'll have to forgive me, I was… in the basement."

"_Oh… Of course_," she replied, with a bow.

"_Aha, is there… anything in particular you are looking for, hmm?_" he asked as he walked to stand behind the counter, leaning against it with on arm resting on the glass casing and the other holding up his chin.

"_No no_!" She started, waving her hands in front of her like a maniac, and, upon realizing what she was doing, snapping them behind her back. "_I was just… taking a walk… and I-_"

That's when she realized this conversation was taking place in English.

"_You…. You speak… English?_" she asked tentatively, though she realized just as soon as it left her lips that it was a dumb question. Of course he knew English, he was talking to her wasn't he?

"_Ah, no_," he replied cheerfully.

'_Maybe not…'_ she though sourly.

"_Wait, yes. Yes I do,"_ he corrected, still smiling kindly.

She waited a moment, taking in that moment of oddness,, before she felt she had to speak out of courtesy. "_I see_…" '_I.. think…'_

Suddenly the cat jumped to the counter, purring and rubbing against the man's arm.

"Oh, Yoru-chan," he exclaimed happily as his smile widened to a grin and he removed the hand under his chin and used it to rub the feline's silky looking head. "_So, you've decided not to hit our guest over the head with a bottle of sake after all, have you?_"

Deidra couldn't help it; her eye twitched.

_'This is getting insanely odd…'_ she though. _'Better wrap this up.'_

"_I… uhm… I really need to get going. My parents-"_

'_Graceful way to bow out there, Deidra,'_ she mentally scolded.

"_Yes, of course_," the man said, waving his hand dissmisively.

Deidra was just thinking she was going to get away scotch free, but the moment her hand brushed the door, preparing to push it, the man spoke again;

"_One thing, Miss. Rhodes_," the man called form the counter.

She turned slowly, for some reason dreading what he would say to her, even though she had no idea what it would be.

He tilted his head down, looking serious now, so she could see just faintly the glimmer of his eyes beneath his hat. "_You are sticking your neck into places it doesn't need to be. You're not special, not like some of the people you know. Watch where you step from now on; you're treading on cracked ice_."

Deidra's lips parted, her jaw almost dropped at his words.

What? What did he mean "cracked ice"?

Was he talking about the kids at school not exactly giving her a warm welcome?

Or… what else could it be?

The only thing she could be sure about in that sentence was that somewhere in the middle, he had insulted her.

She put her hands on her hips, suddenly more than a bit upset at being called ordinary by this man. "Well, gosh. That's awfully rude, dontcha think? You just met me for heaven's sakes. What could you po-"

"Goodbye, Miss. Rhodes!" he called, waving his hand from the wrist as though he were swatting a fly. "My name's Urahara, and I enjoyed assisting you today!"

"LIKE HELL!!!" she yelled, and slammed the door behind her to storm down the street, all the way back home.

Of course, by the time she got home, her anger had faded substantially, and she was already busy analyzing everything "Urahara" had said. And his cat. Why did his cat bring on a huge wave of nostalgia? She hadn't seen any mysterious black cats with smoldering gold eyes running around town, that she could remember.

In the end, she had just deemed the entire encounter odd, and decided Urahara was a fruit loop, with an extra loopy hat to boot.

* * *

A/N: I was GOING to do something else with this chapter, but when I started writing it, I loved it so much I had to incorporate it, you know? Urahara=3

If I get any crucial elements of the story wrong I greatly apologize. Especially about the time line. I got incredibly confused so… I did the best I could. ^^


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